'Vanya,' 'Water' top Globe lineup

New artistic chief Edelstein's first season includes big names, wide variety

David Hyde Pierce (left) and Sigourney Weaver in the Broadway production of "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike." The Old Globe Theatre has just announced that it is bringing the play to San Diego as part of the theater's 2013-14 season. The Broadway production's director, Globe associate artist Nicholas Martin, will stage the Christopher Durang farce here as well.
— AP/Carol Rosegg

David Hyde Pierce (left) and Sigourney Weaver in the Broadway production of "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike." The Old Globe Theatre has just announced that it is bringing the play to San Diego as part of the theater's 2013-14 season. The Broadway production's director, Globe associate artist Nicholas Martin, will stage the Christopher Durang farce here as well.
/ AP/Carol Rosegg

• “The Few,” Sept. 28 to Oct. 27: Globe returnee Davis McCallum (“Back Back Back”) will direct the world-premiere comedy by rising playwright Samuel D. Hunter (“The Whale”) about a foundering Idaho newspaper that relies on personal ads place by long-haul truckers. The play is “sad, funny, but also heartbreaking,” says Edelstein, who calls Hunter “a writer of tremendous substance.” The production will do “what I think we should be doing: taking a brand-new work and giving it a launching pad to the American theater.”

• “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!,” Nov. 16 to Dec. 28: The beloved tradition returns, and so does the go-to local director James Vasquez. Edelstein says the show may be in for a little sprucing-up, but likely no major overhaul. He adds that the Globe will again offer an “autism-friendly” performance, as it did to great success last year.

• “The Winter’s Tale,” Feb. 8 to March 16, 2014: Edelstein staged (to a warm reception) Shakespeare’s lyrical, bittersweet story for New York’s Classic Stage Co. in 2003, with a cast that included David Strathairn as Leontes. The director’s return to it will mark the Globe’s first indoor Shakespeare production in many seasons. Edelstein says that among other things it’s a story about “sudden, surprising and inexplicable violence that hits a society,” something that speaks to these fearful, fitful times. The piece will again feature original music by Michael Torke.

• “Bethany,” Jan. 25 to Feb. 23, 2014: Laura Marks’ bristling, darkly comic work, getting its West Coast premiere, manages to “dramatize that moment of insanity” that led to the American housing bubble and subsequent economic disaster. It focuses on a single mom trying to keep things together in increasingly desperate straits. Gaye Taylor Upchurch, who directed this year’s off-Broadway premiere, and most of the original creative team return.

• “Time and the Conways,” March 29 to May 4, 2014: J.B. Priestley’s 1937 drama jumps back and forth in time to chronicle how pivotal choices by members of an English family play out years later. “I wanted to give people (the kind of) costume drama that San Diego clearly has an appetite for,” says Edelstein, noting the success of the recent “Pygmalion.” “But let’s do it in a way that’s visual and fresh.” His pick for director: Rebecca Taichman, who staged “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” and “Milk Like Sugar” for the Playhouse.

This 2012 photo released by The Hartman Group shows playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes. Hudes wrote the play "Water by the Spoonful." (AP Photo/The Hartman Group, Joshua Lehrer)— AP

This 2012 photo released by The Hartman Group shows playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes. Hudes wrote the play "Water by the Spoonful." (AP Photo/The Hartman Group, Joshua Lehrer)
/ AP

• “Water by the Spoonful,” April 12 to May 11, 2014: Two-time Pulitzer finalist Quiara Alegría Hudes (once as the book writer for the hit musical “In the Heights”) won the big prize last year for this then little-known play, part of a trilogy focused in part on the fallout of war. (One of the characters happens to be a San Diegan.) Edward Torres, now helming the premiere in Chicago of Hudes’ “The Happiest Song Plays Last” (which joins “Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue” in the trilogy), directs the California premiere.

• “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” May 17 to June 22, 2014: The latest work by Christopher Durang. that master of cutting comedy, is on a Broadway tear at the moment, with a cast that includes David Hyde Pierce and Sigourney Weaver. (There's also Tony Award buzz around the performance of Kristine Nielsen, who appeared in the Globe's "Anna Christie" last year.)